Within the field of delivery of submunitions there have been a number of prior art arrangements whereby submunitions, e.g., land mines, are stored in right-circular cylindrically shaped canister tubes. At an intended time, the submunitions are adapted to be ejected from said tube by a propulsion charge. An example of a prior art arrangement is the apparatus disclosed in my previously filed co-pending patent application, Ser. No. 394,086, filed July 1, 1982 for "DISPERSING MINE DISPENSER".
The submunitions contained within the canister tubes are relatively safe as long as they are in such tubes; however, upon ejection from the tube, then they typically become armed through automatic means known to those skilled in the art, e.g., boreriders, impact and/or spin actuation means, etc.
A serious problem with such submunitions is that the propulsion means for ejecting the submunitions from the canister tube could unintentionally, i.e., by accident, become activated so as to try to eject the submunitions from the canister tubes. It will be understood that if the preceding occurred, i.e., an unintended ejection of the submunitions, then there could be great danger and/or death, injury, or damage to personnel and/or property. There has been prior art, rather unsatisfactory attempts to provide some measure of safety to prevent the aforesaid ejection of the submunitions from the tubes prior to the intended time. For example, one arrangement was to use a pallet-like assembly which closely abutted the ends of the loaded canister tubes so as to prevent such unintended ejection. The pallet arrangement has been found very unsatisfactory because, among other things, the pallet cannot be installed adjacent the ends of any single tube until all of the tubes in the total configuration have been assembled on the launching means, e.g., mobile launcher. It is a broad object of my invention to alleviate this problem by providing an improved safety closure lock for a canister tube containing submunitions.